The present invention relates generally to a painting apparatus and, more particularly, to a paint applying device adapted to quickly and neatly paint edges between adjoining surfaces.
Painters commonly use brushes or rollers to paint large wall surfaces in an efficient manner. Using rollers or brushes, however, to form borders between two adjacent surfaces is extremely difficult at best. Several devices for forming borders have been suggested in the prior art.
One popular device has a replaceable pad that is coupled to a flat mounting plate. The mounting plate has a pair of rollers that extend beyond the mounting plate and pad. The rollers ride along the adjacent surface to provide a guide for the pad. For satisfactory operation of the device, the wheels must ride along the adjacent surface. If, however the adjacent surface is very thin or tapered, the wheels are likely to be offset far enough from the surface to be painted that the wheels will not engage the adjacent surface. Another disadvantage of such device is that once paint is picked up by the wheel edges, it is very difficult to sufficiently clean the device to prevent the spread of paint to the adjacent surface.
Another type of device also uses a flat pad having a fixed blade along one edge of the pad. During loading of the pad paint is unavoidably applied to the edge. Paint must then be wiped from the edge before applying paint to the adjacent surface. The result is that the paint operation becomes messy and wasteful.
In yet another known type of tool, an applicator pad is coupled to a mounting plate as in the above devices. A guide member is pivotably mounted to the base. A spacing member is coupled to the guide member and extends beyond the top edge of the mounting plate. When in the paint trimming position the spacing member is parallel to the surface adjacent to the surface to be painted. The spacing member in the trimming position does not extend to the surface to be painted.
Several drawbacks to such a device are apparent. Because the spacing member does not extend to the surface to be painted, and due to the fact that the bristles on the pad have a tendency to flex in an outward direction while applying pressure to the pad, a straight line is dependent upon the pressure of the pad due to the flexing of the bristles. That is, because the spacing member cannot control the amount of flex of the bristles on the pad, paint may be inadvertently applied to the surface adjacent the painted surface.
Another drawback to such a device is that paint may be easily transferred to the adjacent surface. Paint may wick between the spacing member and the adjacent surface. Because the spacing member is parallel to the surface adjacent the surface to be painted, paint tends to wick or to be drawn between the flat edge of the spacing member and the adjacent surface.
Yet another drawback to such a device is that because the guide member does not extend to the interface between the two adjacent surfaces, if the surface adjacent the outer surface is for example a very thin laminate type material, the spacing member may not extend far enough to contact the adjacent surface.
The prior art devices do not provide for a clean line along rough cast ceilings as does the present invention.